Patents Explained: A Series of Posts

People often don’t understand what exactly a patent is.  I’m going to take the next few blog posts to describe the different parts of a patent.  A patent generally consists of several items:

• Abstract
• Drawings
• Background / Field of Invention
• Summary
• Description of the Drawings
• Detailed Description of the Invention
• Claims

Each of these sections serves a different purpose.  Understanding the elements of a patent will help you understand better the nature of a patent, the scope of protection it affords, and a little bit about how an application is written and why.